There was a forest outside the capital city called the Black Sieve — a stretch of ancient woodland where the trees grew so thick that sunlight never reached the ground. It was home to countless spiritual beasts, forbidden herbs, and at least three different cultivation sects that had tried and failed to establish themselves in its depths.

The Seven-Leaf Spirit Grass grew wild in the Black Sieve.

'This is suicide,' Meng Hao told himself as he stepped past the forest's boundary. 'I'm a failed scholar with a mirror and a hex I can't control, walking into the most dangerous forest in the state to find a herb I couldn't afford to buy.'

He kept walking.

The Black Sieve was everything the rumors said. The canopy overhead was so dense that the forest floor existed in a perpetual twilight, illuminated only by the faint bioluminescence of fungi and the occasional glow of beast eyes in the dark. Strange sounds echoed between the trees — not quite animal, not quite human, the kind of sounds that made the lizard part of the brain scream run.

Meng Hao found the first patch of Spirit Grass after two hours, guarded by a Thornback Wolf that stood four feet at the shoulder and had more teeth than seemed strictly necessary. He used the Hex of Binding to pin the wolf against a tree long enough to grab the grass and flee, which was not elegant but was effective.

By nightfall, he had gathered enough Seven-Leaf Spirit Grass for three attempts at Foundation Establishment. His robes were torn, his arms were covered in scratches from thorn bushes, and something had bitten his left calf hard enough to leave teeth marks, but he was alive.

The Black Sieve had not killed him. The experience gave him a strange, unfamiliar feeling that took him several minutes to identify.

Confidence. He was feeling confidence. He immediately distrusted it.